NY Times re: XMRV " Its Science, but Not Necessarily Right"

Interesting article. Digs into the some of the issues that make "science" frustrating for many of us.
It gets to XMRV and LIPKIN half way through.
It implies that the original Science publication was probably mistaken

But none of those critics had actually tried to replicate the initial results. That would take months of research: getting the bacteria from the original team of scientists, rearing them, setting up the experiment, gathering results and interpreting them. Many scientists are leery of spending so much time on what they consider a foregone conclusion, and graduate students are reluctant because they want their first experiments to make a big splash, not confirm what everyone already suspects.

Ive got my own science to do, John Helmann, a microbiologist at Cornell and a critic of the Science paper, told Nature. The most persistent critic, Rosie Redfield, a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia, announced this month on her blog that she would try to replicate the original results but only the most basic ones, and only for the sake of sciences public reputation. Scientifically I think trying to replicate the claimed results is a waste of time, she wrote in an e-mail.

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This pretty much sums up the current XMRV standoff... (though this part is about another controversial study).

I thought the article was good, except when he said Judy Mikovitz is claiming CFS is caused by a virus. She has never said that. But the concluding paragraph (below) effectively refutes the claim by many that the final word is in. I don't think they can say this with credibility when the highly regarded Lipkin is still not finished with his research.

At the request of the National Institutes of Health, Mr. Lipkin is running just such a project with Ms. Mikovits and other researchers to test the link between viruses and chronic fatigue, based on a large-scale study of 300 subjects. He expects results by the end of this year.

the odd thing is that Zimmer seems to think the conclusion is already known. We actually don't know. Some scientists (including top-class scientist(s)?) think they know, other top scientists say we don't yet know.

some of the end-of-XMRV theories are interesting, but none answer more questions than they raise or leave open. to be at the end (the conclusion is known), you have to answer more questions than you raise or leave open.

one way or the other, we need to know... and that requires replication studies, preferably more than one--not that I'm not grateful for the NIH study, which is fabulous and unprecedented in the history of "CFS"

anyway, the theme of his article, that we need to do more replication science, is great. however, we need replication studies both for rebuttal and for confirmation--many things we think we know have not been adequately replicated. Indeed, some investigations have shown that some things we operate on as fact, have actually been refuted in the literature.

Modern science is a mess, and something about the grant process or the textbook-writing process or the review process something else, or some combination or all of these, needs to change.

Boy howdy!
I used to work as a lab tech at UC Berkeley (in research) and was quite dismayed to learn of the routine practices that go on. The companies that fund the labs specify what they want researched and what they hope the findings will be because they have future products in mind. If the lab findings support the company's product development, they get published. If the findings didn't support their product development, they didn't always get published. Sometimes, instead, the lab contacts the company and asks if they want to continue funding and go in a different direction. It seemed to me that only desired results got published in journals. EVEN if there was some kind of new discovery that could be applicable to some other company's product, to my knowledge, it never got published. I personally witnessed this.
I watched actual newly discovered KNOWLEDGE be shelved because the company that funded the research had no application for it. There was no thought to worldwide applications or uses or further research, only immediate profit. Even when I pointed out several possible applications for this new knowledge during a lab meeting, nothing was done. It was like all the Phd-ed people had tunnel vision and it didn't matter what a lowly lab tech with a BS degree said.
I realized then that true science was dead. It has been replaced by capitalism.

There were also problems with competition between labs in different universities racing to be the first to publish research results which led to mistakes being made because people were rushing their work instead of being careful.
The two main driving forces in science seemed to be money and name recognition. Greed and egomania.
And this was at a "not for profit" highly respected university R&D laboratory. Very depressing.

I noticed that one of the recent papers about XMRV to be published was done by a lab at UC San Francisco and I cringed. Dollars to donuts the same sorts of things go on there as at UC Berkeley.

I used to work as a lab tech at UC Berkeley (in research) and was quite dismayed to learn of the routine practices that go on. The companies that fund the labs specify what they want researched and what they hope the findings will be because they have future products in mind. If the lab findings support the company's product development, they get published. If the findings didn't support their product development, they didn't always get published. Sometimes, instead, the lab contacts the company and asks if they want to continue funding and go in a different direction. It seemed to me that only desired results got published in journals. EVEN if there was some kind of new discovery that could be applicable to some other company's product, to my knowledge, it never got published.

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There is at least an ongoing debate about the obligation to publish negative studies . The problem of buried positive studies is somewhat more difficult - there is perhaps a case for interim intellectual property protection that falls short of full patent grant, so that studies could be published without the potentially very substantial costs of patent application having to be met, while still according exploitation rights to the author/funder. Where the defining outcome of research product is company share price in a competitive market, science is unlikely to remain 'pure', and the dangers attached to that highlight how important public funding of science is, not just of 'frontier' projects and major health and social challenges, but the whole spectrum of science.

Why can't the NY Times say "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" or CFS or better yet ME/CFS? Is this so hard to get right? What we have is not "chronic fatigue". Edit: Ok, now that i read the entire article, i see that they only said "chronic fatigue" once, towards the end, but i still think it should never be called like this at all.

Since the CAA says they're not doing advocacy anymore, could the Coalition 4 ME/CFS explain this issue to those people please? I think it's very necessary, what people read in those newspapers impacts wheter they see how serious the problem is or not.

Cort or Mark if you read this, could you discuss this problem with Coalition 4 ME/CFS? I think it's important a group like yours tries to talk with the media, so they finally get the name right.

Another example of where relying on "market forces" is not the best idea. I would also like to point out that I've read drug company publications, in particular about the ubiquitous "statins," in which the written conclusions are not supported by the results. The conclusions are what's latched onto and reported by the media, and published in textbooks, and the actual results are forgotten.

Another example of where relying on "market forces" is not the best idea. I would also like to point out that I've read drug company publications, in particular about the ubiquitous "statins," in which the written conclusions are not supported by the results. The conclusions are what's latched onto and reported by the media, and published in textbooks, and the actual results are forgotten.

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Some years ago,t here wa sa "long term" study of the hopeful ebnefits of prolonged statin use
it was supposed to last for 5 years with further follow ups
they ended it after two years, saying they there was no need for further esting, the benefits were obvious, hurray the new wonder drug!
and as we now know...statins DO have serious problems from long term or wrongful use.

Drug company execs should each be forced to take a dose of each of their poisons....modern day anti-Socrates